Tips to Stay Focused

With our tans still very noticeable, our Facebook page filled with new holiday snaps and even the occasional still unpacked suitcase, it can be pretty hard to return to your everyday life. Whether you’re still in school or you’re already working, staying focused is never easy when your mind is still is at the beach preferably ordering that killer Caesar salad with chips on the side.

My most honest advice would be to just stay with that mind-set and maybe even return to your holiday destination, but it frankly wouldn’t be my best advice. Therefore I’m providing you with some easy steps you can take to easy yourself back into that every day work/school life again.

Great experiences make even better memories. Before we get to the actual tips to stay focused I just want to state the following. It is never a bad idea to just reminisce by scrolling through your old holiday photos. Sometimes it is such an easy way for you to go back to that happy place without actually going there. Does this make any sense? What I’m trying to say is that you should take a little break from reality every now and then, to just think about the better and especially warmer days.

Now on to the real stuff. First of all, the thing that can motive me a lot is getting pretty stationary. If the things you use to do your (home)work make you happy, it will become a lot less difficult to get demotivated. This is something that will work for a few weeks only I can imagine. After a while we all get sick of the stuff that used to make us happy. You might want to buy half of all the supplies you actually need, so you can buy new exciting things halfway through the (school)year that will motive you all over again.

Sometimes you can feel like it’s all a little bit too much, and you get lost in a sea of deadlines, assignments, readings etc. Whenever you feel like it’s too much it’s easier to get distracted, basically because we’re too lazy to deal with everything at once. But that’s the thing, you shouldn’t deal with everything at once. Tackle one thing at a time and rank everything in lists, place the most important/urgent things first and work all the way down to the least important/less urgent things. This way you will notice that you might not even have that much to do. It’s better for you to write things down than keeping all of those thoughts in your mind. They can be pretty distracting!

Last but
certainly not least, if you give yourself small
challenges every now and then you will see that you’re more focused to
reach the certain goals. By challenges I don’t mean the ALS Ice-Bucket one,
although you’re free to do that one if you fancy (consider yourself tagged).
What I’m referring to are the simple things like reading 5 pages instead of 3,
going for a higher grade than the one before, making it an hour before the
deadline instead of half an hour. If you set these type of goals for yourself,
and try to work on reaching them you are less likely to get distracted. If you
succeed, you even improved your skills! It’s a win-win situation!

And remember,
even the most dedicated amongst us have those days of watching YouTube videos instead
of getting their work done. It’s ok.